The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2018

by John Joseph Adams

  “No.” Cellibrex turned around to face me under the blanket. “I never thought this was going to be a very good life—and it was a lot better than it could have been. Hey, little fellow, hold my big guy.”

  “Come on, don’t joke around now.”

  “Who’s joking?”

  “Cell, I keep asking you the same questions every few years. But are you sure you never went to the moon, or to Mars, or to the lunar colonies on Io or Europa, Ganymede, or Callisto?”

  “And I told you, no. I was in jail. I was in the army. I just don’t know where. They were just earthside testing of behaviors someone wanted to try out on a population in a low-gravity landscape—that is, if all the folks who think they’re actually putting people on other planets are right. But I never left the surface of our infinite flat world. That’s what I know. And I’m never going to believe anything else.”

  I said, “There’re too many people on the planet. We’re two men and can’t reproduce. Doesn’t that make us good people? Or at any rate, we haven’t reproduced more than once, between the two of us, as far as you know.”

  “Yes . . . ?” He moved closer to me, and I could feel his breath on my forehead, my beard against his chest. “You say I repeat myself. How many times have you said that?” His arm went around me; no, it’s not as strong as it once was. But it’s the arm that always holds me, as the other goes up and tries to find a position over my head and I smell the very familiar and reassuring odor of what’s under it. “Well, even if you’re right—which I’m not saying, now—that’s the kind of thing I just wasn’t brought up to worry about. And I told you, I may have left one kid back there, somewhere.”

  “That’s what I was referring to.” I wondered if I should tell him the Hermit had said he’d been on a “virtual lunar colony.” But because it was virtual, perhaps that’s what Cellibrex meant about it’s being somewhere on the “flat” earth, and from his point of view he was right. “You said you don’t feel bad about that one either. Was that a . . . a different kind of human being?”

  “Naw. It was just some guy who’d had a particular set of operations. Either he had it or he decided not to. So maybe I’m not quite as good as you.” His high arm came down and I raised my head to let it go under my neck.

  “We are such different people, you and I. Why are we still together?”

  I felt him shrug. “Habit. Great sex from time to time . . .” He chuckled. “Hell, ordinary sex from time to time, which is easier to find on the other side of the bed than going out and trying to locate an entire older group of guys who like the same sort of things you do. Which, I confess, isn’t bad either—when I still have the energy or the concentration for it.” He adjusted himself, adjusted me on top of him, against him. “And we’re used to each other.

  “We’ve only been here a few days, and I had a dream that I used to have again and again when I was a kid. Odd. I was in a testing group, a huge testing group, and we all had to fight each other, no matter what we were doing, to see who came out on top. So I decided to take the most important things I knew: my name, where I was from, and my birthday with me in my head. I didn’t even bother with my ID number. I could always get another. And did several times. In the dream, we fought and fought and fought and . . . then I woke up.”

  It took a while for him to tell me that, actually, in his short accented sentences. But one of the things I said back to him was, “No. You never told me this before.” And another was, “You actually know how old you are?”

  “I am seventy-nine,” Cellibrex told me in the three-quarters dark.

  I said, “I never asked you, because I didn’t know how old I was, so I assumed you didn’t know either.” Then I added, “If that wasn’t a dream, and you actually did it sometime when you were a child or a younger man, that was very smart. Especially because you got away with it. So you really were from Mexico?”

  He grunted, and moved his beard on the top of my bald spot. That could have been a head signal for a yes or a no; lying there, I couldn’t tell, though I looked up to see his face. “Argentina,” he said with enough of an accent that he had to repeat it half a dozen times before I realized it was the name of someplace I had actually heard of before.

  There’s a coda to the story. Three weeks later I came home and found Cellibrex dead on our filthy living room rug. A teacup had overturned on the table. His pocket phone was out, and on, and when I picked it up from where it had fallen maybe a foot from his hand (we both used the same access number), I managed to call up an incomplete, unsent, and mangled text message:

  Could you please come home before bat-shit crazy

  With the handle of my cane I smashed the phone and a few other things in the room. Then I sat at the table and took great gasps, stood up again, checked to see if he was alive, but he wasn’t—I’d been sure of that from the moment I’d seen him lying there.

  Then, because that’s the kind of mind I have, I wondered: Had he been trying to type “before I go bat-shit crazy” or even “before these bat-shit crazy men [or whatever] . . .”? Had somebody come into the place? But no. It was just some failure of the aged machinery of life . . .

  But now I was convinced that the phone itself had killed him: because it had made me feel I was always in contact with him when I wasn’t. I hadn’t been in the same room with him. And I was a wreck, because if there had been a last twenty seconds, a last ten, a last five, I felt a malevolent force had robbed me of them, when they should have been his and mine. The phone itself had lied to me, because it had said I was with Teddy C. Rodriguez when I was not.

  Then I had no idea what to do, where to go, who to look for or phone to tell about it. He was in a pair of ragged underpants, and the marks on his body that had been a text whose meanings I had felt totally familiar with among his far more white than black body hair the day before were now, in a way they had never seemed before, cryptic and incomprehensible. So I sat down in the big, soft, ragged chair.

  Then I struggled up again and wandered around the house. Then I sat down once more, stood up suddenly—and walked out of the house. I had a hoodie on, and I just walked, and eventually I decided to walk in the sun, and that was better. In the shade I saw the wall of a building where, perhaps fifty years ago, someone had made a mosaic of tiles and paint and pieces of mirror, and I got to looking at it, and examining it—and after a minute realized I was thinking of Cellibrex’s death; but in the course of looking at it, I realized some thirty seconds had gone by where I hadn’t thought about him or his death at all, and that was astonishing and scary . . . and maybe . . . right.

  My own pocket phone buzzed, and I took it out. I coughed—some great glob of phlegm had caught down there, and now came up in my mouth, and I swallowed it, surprised, and wondered why I hadn’t spit it out. That’s what Cellibrex would have done . . .

  “Hello . . . ?” I said.

  A man’s voice said, “Just a moment. This is the Hermit of Houston. . . .” While I wondered why, if the Hermit of Houston was in fact a woman, they didn’t use a woman’s voice, the man told me that I should go to a certain address and ring. Someone was expecting me.

  It wasn’t that far, actually.

  “I don’t want to see anyone right—” I cleared my throat again “—right now.”

  “I would advise you do. This must be a very hard time for you. From where you are now, it’s only perhaps six streets away.”

  “All right,” I said.

  “It’s what most people do. And it works. You can call us back if you need anything.”

  And half an hour later, an elderly, very black African was making me a pot of tea and we were sitting at his kitchen table, quietly together. His place was different enough from ours that I felt comfortable, but not so different as—say—the Hermit’s, where I’d just felt completely disoriented. At one point as we began talking, I remember saying something that a writer I’d been fond of who’d died before I was born had written: “People are not replaceable . . .”
or something like it.

  But he poured me another cup of tea. “Good people will often do similar things for you, however.” His name was Hammond. “Each one does it in a different way.”

  I thought of Cellibrex making tea. I thought of the robots of the Hermit of Houston.

  And I stayed there for three weeks. Hammond was younger than Cellibrex but older than I was. He had been to Mars and remembered it very clearly. We slept in the same bed. On the second night, he told me, “I can hold you, if you like. If you would like to have sex, we can do that. Or I will just stay where I am, and be near if you want to talk.” I chose one, and on the third night decided that my choice had been a mistake so chose another. And decided Hammond was an extremely tolerant man—and came very close to crying for the first time. (Later, I actually did. But I guess at some point we all do. At least I think so.) And at the end of two weeks I felt better. Then somehow it was six months later; I was living by myself again. And life was going on. There’d been a funeral that only about seven people had come to, but Hammond was one of them, but there’s no point going into all that.

  The Star Wars film was in reruns—which Cellibrex had enjoyed: where you just went to a small theater with a few hundred people in sensory masks, all sitting around together watching only the sex scenes, sometimes with people observing from their homes, sometimes with people right next to you, which Cellibrex said was the kind of porn he’d been brought up on. And I’d liked going with him and I’d liked going with strangers—and yes, I still did.

  Now and then I wondered if Cellibrex had known something that had died with him that might have explained something to me, if only I had thought to ask. Or was he just someone who knew no more of the whole story than I or anyone else? Would I eventually forget how much I thought there might be to know, even as I remembered how much I’d been warmed by knowing and being near him—by being as different from him as I had been?

  Sometimes I tried to remember the things that had made Cellibrex another person I had been able to live with and—I guess—love all this time—and often I’d stopped because they were too . . . confusing? Painful?

  With a greater variety in all its social structures, what might life have been like? What might coffee have tasted like, though personally I couldn’t remember it at all, in a world of unions without borders?

  It was easier to think that this had all been set up by the Hermit of Houston, who I had once known when she was an assistant and knew now as a computer and, I guess, a man.

  And I was even thankful for them.

  Jaymee Goh

  The Last Cheng Beng Gift

  from Lightspeed Magazine

  There was definitely something to be said about being Mrs. Lim, even into the Underworld: something about comfort, something about privilege, something about a status quo carried into the afterlife. The previous matriarch that bore the title of Mrs. Lim had moved on long before Mrs. Lim got there, but since Mrs. Lim had not liked the domineering nature of her predecessor, this did not bother her overmuch.

  One of the things to be said about being Mrs. Lim was that during Cheng Beng, she received many, many presents. These many lush things from her children helped her keep abreast of the living world, to a certain extent. It was unusual for anyone to keep receiving Cheng Beng gifts so long after dying, but then, Mrs. Lim was of a family with unusually high expectations.

  Mrs. Lim was always vaguely pleased with the gifts. Her children were secular in their beliefs, but clearly not in their practice. Even an offering made automatically without any real intent behind it was something that contributed to her otherworld comfort. And if the gifts faded at their edges, who would notice, when she received so many? Even if she did receive fewer than she had before.

  Best of all, Mrs. Lim did not even have to share them with Mr. Lim, who had, as in life, been too full of overabundant energies to remain in the Underworld for very long. Once he had been satisfied that he had accomplished all he had meant to do in this life—the goals had been to expand his family’s business and raise fine children that would take over said business in order to produce fine grandchildren—he opted instead for Meng Por’s forgetfulness tea and went straight for reincarnation.

  So this had been the case until the tenth year of her death, when she received from her daughter, Hong Yin, a coupon for a visit to the fish spa.

  Mrs. Lim turned the coupon in her hand over and over, confused at the invitation, and a bit annoyed. Couldn’t Hong Yin have sent her something more fitting for the Underworld, like new clothes? Mrs. Lim liked receiving them, just as she had liked buying them for the dead when she herself had been alive.

  “So creative!” Ah Fong gushed. “Your Ah Hong Yin always so one kind. When you go, I also want to go!”

  “Aiya, you know lah Ah Hong Yin, always love going to the fish spa one,” Mrs. Lim replied. “I dunno why she love it so much.”

  Mrs. Lim didn’t want to confess, even to her best friend, that she had never been to a fish spa before, even in life.

  Hong Yin had not been a bad child, but there was something about her which had put her at odds with Mrs. Lim. Mrs. Lim always felt bad—for thinking that perhaps Hong Yin should not have been her child, perhaps Hong Yin would have been happier raised by her Auntie Blur, one of Mr. Lim’s distant cousins, who would have not noticed all Hong Yin’s strangeness, her difference from Mrs. Lim’s other children. Mrs. Lim knew that these were unmotherly thoughts to have, but they inevitably rose whenever Hong Yin sent anything during Cheng Beng. They had been acceptable, if odd, gifts at first: lingerie (pretty, but not appropriate for someone Mrs. Lim’s age); a flat-screen TV (Mrs. Lim had not been disposed to watch much TV when she had been alive); a house in some strange contemporary style (also an impetus for Mr. Lim moving on; if their youngest child could afford to send a house, then his work was truly done).

  But Mrs. Lim had never rejected any of her children’s gifts, dead or alive, and she saw no reason to reject this one. So she went to the fish spa at the ghostly address her daughter had dreamed up for her. Luckily, the Underworld being an existential state with no fixed geography, there was no need to call a taxi.

  The receptionist had an approximation of a friendly face. “Oh, using a coupon? Got reservation or not? Under what name?”

  “Mrs. Lim,” she said tersely to the ghost receptionist.

  Once upon a time, if anyone had asked her, she would have said to call her Ah Wen, or Auntie Wen. Perhaps even Xiao Wen; she always thought she had a pretty name. But she had the fortune to marry into the leading Lim family, the first son even, and Lim Teck Meng towered so large in their circle of friends and acquaintances, Xiao Wen quickly became Mrs. Lim, to distinguish her from the other women who married into that illustrious family. The Mrs. Lim, who managed to bag a rich husband despite looking so boring and plain. The Mrs. Lim who herded her three children into successful adulthoods and an entire extended family into successful annual reunions. The Mrs. Lim who was her husband’s most stalwart support.

  Mrs. Lim remained Mrs. Lim into death; she saw no reason to give up the name, even into death.

  The server, who doubled as a masseuse apparently, showed her where to put her shoes, rinse her feet, then step up to the platform around the fish tanks where she could sit down and stick her feet in.

  The fish swarmed around her feet immediately. She jerked her feet away from them, jostling the water. She sucked her teeth in annoyance. Perhaps she was doing this wrong. Perhaps she was supposed to sit still.

  The fish circled about her feet, wary after her initial reaction. When they began their work again, Mrs. Lim waited for the expected ticklishness.

  Did ghost feet feel ticklish? Mrs. Lim had never considered this before. She watched in fascination as the ghost fish performed their duty in death as they must have in life. They were not real, and Mrs. Lim knew that they should be, in their own way. What did real fish feel like? Why did she not know? Why had she never known?

  Sh
e jerked her feet away from the fish, glaring at them in lieu of glaring at Hong Yin. Difficult Hong Yin, who asked stupid questions even though she was clearly so smart, who picked fights over such unnecessary things. Why should Mrs. Lim have known such things? And why should Mrs. Lim think about them now that she was dead?

  These thoughts did not leave her when she left the fish spa, utterly unsatisfied with her visit, and thus with Hong Yin, who had failed to deliver a satisfactory Cheng Beng gift. She went to visit Ah Fong to complain about it.

  “Haunt her,” Ah Fong suggested. “Whenever one of my children send me something I don’t like, I visit their house.”

  “Ah Fong!” Mrs. Lim was scandalized.

  Ah Fong laughed. “What? It’s good for them to know I’m still around for them!”

  Mrs. Lim didn’t subscribe to the same opinion. “Dead people shouldn’t be among the living. It means something is wrong.”

  “If my kids send me something I don’t like, that’s something wrong what.”

  Mrs. Lim dropped the subject.

  The next year came the usual gifts: new clothes, a Gucci handbag, a laptop computer. Also, more mischief from Hong Yin: a house with its very own fish spa. She invited her friends to come enjoy it and was envious of their delight in reexperiencing the novelty of the nibbling fish. She even invited Mrs. Tan, the Mrs. Tan of the leading Tan family. The matriarchs had not gotten along in life, but their rivalry mellowed in the afterlife. They were cordial, if not friends.

  “How come you never go before!” Ling Mo exclaimed upon learning Mrs. Lim’s secret.

  “Too busy,” Mrs. Lim said.

  “Ah Lim tai-tai was always too busy for silly things like this sort of thing, you know!” Ah Fong laughed.

  “Good thing you’re dead then,” Ling Mo said, “now got time to enjoy.”

  Mrs. Lim didn’t feel like she was enjoying herself much, watching the fish have a go at everyone’s feet. The fish pecked at her feet; she had an internal argument with herself over whether she actually felt them or whether she pretended to. Her friends gossiped about their children around her while she intently watched the water.